The exhibition will open on February 21, 2017 at 16:00. It will feature a series of watercolors done by the artist specially for the edition of War and Peace published by the Khudozhestvennaya Literatura publisher to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. The artist worked on the illustrations for seven years. The watercolors will be shown together with quotations from the novel.

Melikhov‘s works are done in a kind of decorative manner, which reminds one of the technique of the book miniature. His artwork is characterized by a wish to visualize the epoch, by an encyclopedic and scrupulous interest in details. Thus, the War and Peace series can boast of its absolute historical verisimilitude in the way the costumes, environment, and army uniforms of various army units, both Russian and the enemy’s, are depicted. The artist’s attention to peaceful life was no less careful, be it the depiction of a ball, a theater, a baptism ceremony, hunting, a name-day celebration, or Christmas festivities.

As part of the exhibition, a cycle of lecture on Leo Tolstoy‘s works will be organized at the Yasnaya Polyana Gallery for 10th- and 11th-grade students: Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana, War and Peace: the History of Creation and the Fate of the Book, Leo Tolstoy and the Cinema, and others. Lectures and guided tours of the exhibition should be booked at +7-920-272-32-04.

We also remind high school teachers that on March 18 the program Through the Pages of War and Peace will be offered. Its participants will visit a thematic guided tour focusing on the novel and the Mosaic of the Epic exhibition in the Volkonsky House, and check their knowledge during a quiz.

Background information:

Alexander Melikhov (1942) is a well-known graphic artist; author of illustrations of literary works of different epochs and cultures, among them Mahabharata, Afanasy Nikitin‘s A Journey Beyond the Three Seas, A Thousand and One Nights, A Tale of Hodja Nasreddin, Illustrated Explanatory Dictionary of V.I. Dal, Andersen’s tales, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Mikhail Lermontov’s Ashik Kerib, and others.

Books with the artist‘s illustrations were published not only in Russia, but also abroad: in the Czech Republic, China, and France. His works were exhibited in Bulgaria, Poland, Germany, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Great Britain. Melikhov‘s works based on Russian classical literature have lately become part and parcel of events promoting Russian literature abroad.

The exhibition will be open from Tuesday to Sunday, at 11:00-19:00. Cost of admission: free of charge for visitors under 16 years of age; 15 rubles for a discounted ticket; 30 rubles for a full-price ticket. Cost of a ticket for a guided tour: 30 rubles for visitors under 16 and for a discounted ticket; 45 rubles for a full-price ticket.